Cam Schlittler spent the season striking out batters and holding lineups to one run or fewer. On Wednesday, the baseball writers who vote on the Cy Young Award gave him their answer, and it was unanimous.
Schlittler, a 25-year-old right-hander, was named the unanimous American League Cy Young Award winner, announced on MLB Network. He earned all 30 first-place votes, finishing ahead of Toronto’s Dylan Cease and Cleveland’s Parker Messick. In his first full season, Schlittler went 14-6 with an AL-best 1.95 ERA, with 239 strikeouts in 193 2/3 innings.
The award is the Yankees’ seventh and their first since Gerrit Cole in 2023. Schlittler beat a rotation that included Cole, Max Fried and Carlos Rodón for the league’s top pitching honor. “The end goal is to win a championship,” he said on MLB Network.
The numbers behind the unanimous vote
Schlittler led the American League in pitching WAR (6.2) and opponent on-base percentage (.244). His 1.95 ERA was the third-lowest mark in franchise history by a qualified pitcher, behind only Spud Chandler’s 1.64 in 1943 and Ron Guidry’s 1.74 in 1978. He allowed one run or fewer in a majors-best 21 starts, according to the New York Post.
The voting was not close. Schlittler received all 30 first-place votes and 210 points. Cease finished second with 110 points, Messick third with 84, Drew Rasmussen fourth with 72, and Sonny Gray fifth with 21, according to the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Schlittler, Cease, Messick and Rasmussen were named on every ballot.
His 239 strikeouts tied Jack Chesbro’s 1904 total for the fourth-most by a Yankees pitcher in a single season, as MLB.com noted. The Yankees were 21-12 in games he started, a record that points to how much the team leaned on him, as our Yankees October coverage has followed.
Schlittler was a seventh-round pick in 2022 out of Northeastern, from Walpole, Massachusetts. His fastball averaged 98 mph, and he added velocity that exceeded the team’s expectations. “He bought into everything that we were selling,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said this week. “He’s been a godsend.” The rotation money around him is the subject of our MLB spending breakdown.
The award has a longer history than his age suggests. The last Yankee to win it before Cole was Roger Clemens in 2001, and Clemens was the person who announced Schlittler as the winner. Schlittler joins Guidry (1978) and Cole (2023) as the franchise’s unanimous winners, a group our MLB honors coverage has tracked.
How many first-place votes did Cam Schlittler get?
All 30. He was the unanimous choice of the two writers representing each American League city, and he was named on every ballot. The award was announced Wednesday on MLB Network.
Milwaukee’s Jacob Misiorowski won the National League Cy Young Award unanimously, and the inaugural Reliever of the Year awards went to Louis Varland of the Blue Jays and Miller of the Padres. For Schlittler, the focus turns to 2027 and a heavier workload. “I think I’m in a really good spot to handle the workload again next year,” he said.
